Note: This story is a slow-burn romance and will contain mature themes/scenes in later chapters

PROLOGUE

*Camille*

Brooklyn, New York
Two Months After the Move

The apartment smelled like paint and pine cleaner. Light poured through the big window, and the floorboards groaned like they remembered other people’s lives.

Brooklyn felt like a foreign language I hadn’t quite learned—too loud, too fast, but promising something I couldn’t yet name.

I stood by the window, arms crossed, pretending I wasn’t watching my father pace like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He’d helped cover the deposit. Bought the bed. Carried the last box like that made up for anything.

Lena was in the kitchen, laughing about the French press she refuses to replace. She was warm—always had been. We met three years ago in London, taking a summer course at the atelier. She kept me laughing when I didn’t want to speak. Somehow, she stayed.

I was grateful for her.
Even if I hadn’t fully let her in.

My father finally stopped moving, eyes scanning the room like he could see me in the walls.
“It’s smaller than I imagined,” he said, nodding once. “But it suits you.”
I smiled thinly. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

I didn’t say, So now you know what suits me?.

He tapped his knuckles on the kitchen island. “You doing okay? You look… good.”

That word again. Good.
I used to think if I was good enough, he’d come back.
But he didn’t.

When the door shut behind them, the silence folded around me like a too-heavy blanket.

A cracked mug on the counter caught my eye—one of the few things I’d taken from home.

I didn’t cry.
Leaving wasn’t about distance—it was about breathing again.
My mother’s apartment felt like a room filled with smoke. This one, at least, had windows. Not even when I agreed to this apartment—one my father offered to rent “just until you find your footing.”
Like I was a baby deer learning to stand.

He hadn’t always been generous. Or even present.

It was a Tuesday.
He left when I was nine. And my mother broke like glass.
He kissed my forehead, turned to her like she was a stranger he didn’t owe anything to.
“It’s just a few months,” he said, suitcase in hand, voice cool as winter.

He didn’t come back.

Three days later, my mother stood in the hallway smoking another cigarette.
I was at the table, drawing with dull pencils.
Without looking at me, she muttered, almost to herself:
“Depuis qu’elle est née, il n’a plus jamais été le même.”
Ever since she was born, he was never the same.

I don’t think she meant to say it out loud.
But I heard it. And I believed it.

For years, I carried that line like a tattoo under my ribs.
I was the reason he left.
The reason she fell apart.

So I started eating less. Talking less. Smiling only when someone was watching.
By fourteen, I was perfect at pretending I didn’t need anyone.

Now, I ran my fingers over the mug, thumb tracing the chip.
He left, and it shattered something in both of us.
But where she drowned, I learned how to float—pretending I wasn’t searching for something to hold.

And here I was, surrounded by unfamiliar walls that didn’t yet know me.
Trying to do what she couldn’t.
Trying to become someone solid.

I shook myself out of it. I never liked lingering.
Pulled my sketchbook from a box—half-finished silhouettes stared back. Lines too clean, too careful. Like I was designing something I didn’t believe in yet.

I’d gone to therapy once.
Twice, actually.
She said I had abandonment trauma. That I should unpack the maternal dynamic.
Used words like internalized guilt and attachment anxiety.
Asked too many questions too fast.
So I stopped going.I didn’t have time or money.

Sometimes, I believed that.
Sometimes, the distance between me and the breakdown felt like enough.

I crossed the room, back to the window.

Brooklyn looked soft in the afternoon light—the hum of traffic, a siren, someone’s playlist bleeding through an open window.

This is your life now, I told myself. Start from here.

I whispered the old words my mother used to say before she became unreachable:

“On recommence. Encore une fois.” We begin again. One more time.

I wasn’t sure I believed it.

But I said it anyway.

*Daniele*

Brooklyn, New York

Three Months Before

The studio lights were so bright they blurred the edges of things.

I shifted on the couch, ran a hand through my hair, and smiled at the girl next to me like I wasn’t dead inside from shooting fake chemistry all afternoon.

“Okay, Dani, one more take,” Vince — my agent — called. “Flirt harder.”

Ari — tall, blonde, MatchUp’s latest “dream pairing” — leaned into me like she’d done this a thousand times. Maybe she had.

I smirked, slow and sharp. “If I flirt any harder, they’re gonna have to censor it.”

She laughed, tipping her drink toward mine. The crew chuckled. Someone behind the camera whispered “He’s such a natural.”

Yeah, no shit.

“Describe your perfect match,” Ari purred for the promo cut.

I tilted my head, letting a beat of silence drag just long enough to make her lean in. Then:
“Me. Just… slightly less difficult.”

Laughter. Cameras clicking. Vince’s voice: “Perfect. Keep that grin—Jesus, this shit’s gonna blow up.”

It always did.

We wrapped fast. Ari squeezed my arm with manicured fingers. “You’re fun,” she said.

“Dangerously,” I replied with a wink.

But the second I stepped outside the set, it slipped — the grin, the voice, the version of me that sold well.

By the time I got home, my jaw ached from smiling. My feet hurt. I didn’t even turn on the lights. Just dropped my jacket and kicked off my boots in the dark.

It’s not like I hated it — the attention, the numbers, the brand. It paid for the apartment. The guitars. The nights I could take my band out and pretend we’d already made it.

But most nights, I’d trade a million likes for the feeling I used to get writing demos in Jax’s garage — broke, tired, and fucking alive.

I picked up my guitar, let my fingers fall into old muscle memory. Quiet. A few chords. Just enough to remind myself I could still feel it.

The fame was supposed to be the prize. But most nights, it felt like the price. All the noise, all the eyes—it looked like connection, until I realized it was just an echo.

What I really wanted was something solid.

A voice that hit back.

 I wasn't sure what I wanted anymore, but I knew it wasn't this.